And Now She is Gone

Tag: #RewatchReplay #GriefJourney #WidowerLife #LoveAfterLoss #HealingThroughMusic #MusicAndMemory

  • I Want to Die: Four Words That Can Mean Two Different Things

    I Want to Die: Four Words That Can Mean Two Different Things

    A quick note before you read: this one gets into suicidal ideation, a hospital stay, and grief. If any of that is heavy for you right now, take care of yourself first—the 988 Lifeline (call or text) is there any time, day or night.

    I just finished Hacks. I can’t say I loved it—not really my cup of tea—but it certainly left an impression. Chock-full of memorable lines, one of which has stuck with me since I first heard it.

    Season 4, Episode 6: Ava angrily quits her job and walks down to the beach at night. Deborah tracks her down, mistakes another redhead in the ocean for her, and swims out fully clothed to rescue the wrong woman. When Deborah turns around and screams, “I thought you were drowning yourself!”, Ava sighs and replies, “Yeah, I’m not suicidal. I just want to die.”

    One morning, a few months after losing my wife, I found myself in the hospital. The whole incident is kind of a fog-induced blur—I just know that I was scared. The official diagnosis was severe depression with suicidal ideation. When I heard the word suicide, years of repressed Baptist guilt came rushing to the surface, and I suddenly felt like I was doing something wrong, as if there were a right way to grieve. I didn’t know how to unpack the word, or what it meant to—or for—me.

    I’m not suicidal. I just want to die.

    People hear “I just want to die” and think it’s about ending something. It isn’t. It’s about the fact that something has already ended.

    When you lose the person you built your future around, you don’t just lose them—you lose the future itself. Every plan that had her in it. Every version of getting older that assumed her name would still be there. That future didn’t fade or change shape. It died the same day she did.

    So when I say I don’t want to be here, I’m not talking about here as in alive. I’m talking about here as in this version of the world; the one where I’m asked to build a new future out of a life I never chose and never wanted. Nobody gave me a say in it. I just woke up one day and the future I’d been living toward was gone, and everyone expected me to want a different one instead.

    That’s not a death wish. That’s grief refusing to pretend the math still works.

  • She Knew I’d Get Here

    She Knew I’d Get Here

    I heard “The Story” by Brandi Carlile for the first time today.

    Not “first time” like I’d never heard it before. Katy and I were fans. Well, Katy was the real fan. I was more of a casual participant. Still, Brandi’s music lived in the background of our life. Car rides. Target aisles. Saturday mornings.

    Katy tried to get me excited about her. I’m pretty sure she used “The Story” as Exhibit A. Not pushy. Not dramatic. Just her quiet confidence, the kind that didn’t argue or oversell. She’d just press play, like she knew I’d catch up eventually.

    For whatever reason, I wasn’t ready to hear what Brandi was saying.

    I have a lot of time to listen these days. So after some internal negotiations, I put the song on. No distractions. No emotional armor. I just let it play.

    By the time she lands on I was made for you, every moment my wife had tried to get me to listen came rushing back. Every “I’ll check it out later” that never happened. Every missed chance to meet her inside something she loved.

    Now I hear it.
    And I wish she were here so I could tell her she was right.

    Our relationship started with music. I once burned her a CD, hand‑picked tracks, romantic as hell, basically a sonic declaration of devotion. And there she was, years later, trying to hand me a song that said the same thing back. I just didn’t recognize it at the time.

    How many car rides did it play?
    How many times did she belt it out in the shower?

    She was sharing.
    I was half‑listening.

    If I had truly heard “The Story” in that first year after she died, it would’ve wrecked me. Back then, the emotion was too raw. The reality of life without her was a bruise I kept pressing just to make sure it still hurt. I’m sure I skipped it. Changed the station. Found something safer.

    I wasn’t ready.

    Now? It still hurts. It always will on some level. But I hear what she was telling me in the words Brandi wrote. She loved me. She was meant for me. I was meant for her.

    That’s what a great song can do.

    A good song makes noise.
    A great song makes a home.

    It settles in quietly, plays in the background of your existence, and one day you realize it’s been there all along. Just waiting for you to be ready.

    I didn’t cry. I didn’t need to.
    I just sat there and let it be true.

    And honestly?
    That felt like progress.

    And somewhere, out there in the dust of whatever this is, I can almost hear her:

    “Seriously!? Now you decide to listen!? Asshole…”